Principal Investigators
Katrin Iken, Ph.D.
Dr. Katrin Iken is the lead investigator of the AMBON project and is a benthic ecologist with particular interest in the Arctic ecosystem. She studies benthic community structure with focus on the biodiversity and structure of epibenthic communities, i.e., the organisms that live on the surface of the seafloor. She also studies food web structures through stable isotope analysis. Katrin has been working in the Arctic for 15 years, with significant time spent in the field in the summers; previous to her Arctic work, she was mostly engaged in Antarctic research. Aside from several other Arctic research projects, Katrin also is active in the international Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program of CAFF (Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna, an Arctic Council Working group) as the US benthic expert member. Katrin received her PhD at the Alfred Wegner Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Germany and did post-doctoral work at the AWI and the University of Alabama at Birmingham before starting a faculty position at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Bodil Bluhm, Ph.D.
Dr. Bodil Bluhm is Affiliate Faculty with the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a Professor at UiT – the Arctic University of Norway. She holds a MS degree in zoology from Kiel University and a PhD in marine biology from University of Bremen (both in Germany). Her research is on benthic and sea ice-related habitats in polar areas with a focus on biodiversity and community ecology, foods webs, cryo-pelagic-benthic coupling and invertebrate population dynamics. She has worked in the Pacific and Atlantic Arctic for nearly 2o years and has a strong interest in regional and pan-Arctic integration. Within AMBON, she contributes to the benthic component.
Jacqueline Grebmeier, Ph.D.
Dr. Jacqueline Grebmeier is Research Professor and a biological oceanographer at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Zoology from the University of California, Davis in 1977 and went on to receive Masters Degrees in Biology from Stanford University in 1979, and in Marine Affairs from the University of Washington in 1983, specializing in applications of Arctic science to Arctic policy. Dr. Grebmeier earned a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1987. She has played a leadership role in coordinating and promoting national and international arctic research. She recently completed her service as the U.S. delegate to, and a vice-president of the International Arctic Science Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Polar Research Board of the National Academies, and she also served formerly as a Commissioner of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission following appointment by President Clinton. She has contributed to other coordinated international and national science planning efforts including service on the steering committee for U.S. efforts during the International Polar Year. Over the last thirty years she has participated in over 45 oceanographic expeditions on both US and foreign vessels, many as Chief Scientist, and she was the overall project lead scientist for the U.S. Western Arctic Shelf-Basin Interactions project, which was one of the largest U.S. funded global change studies undertaken in the Arctic. Her research includes studies of pelagic-benthic coupling in marine systems, benthic carbon cycling, benthic faunal population structure, and polar ecosystem health, and she has published approximately 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and she has also served as editor of several books and journal special issues. Her research is focused on understanding how arctic marine ecosystems respond to environmental change, particularly efforts to illuminate the importance of benthic biological systems.
Kathy Kuletz, Ph.D.
The Principal Investigator for the Seabird Component of AMBON is Dr. Kathy Kuletz, who is the Seabird Coordinator for Migratory Bird Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska. She has been involved in research and monitoring of seabirds in Alaska for over 30 years, including studies on distribution, abundance, habitat use, diet, productivity, and seabird-prey interactions. She has worked in all of Alaska’s oceans and her projects have contributed over 200,000 km of survey effort to the North Pacific Pelagic Seabird Database. Her collaborative projects have included SOAR, Arctic Eis, BSIERP, and GulfWatch Alaska. Kathy earned her B.Sc degree at California Polytechnic State University, her M.Sc. at University of California, Irvine, and her Ph.D. at University of Victoria, British Columbia. Kathy is current Chair of the Pacific Seabird Group, an Associate Editor of the journal Marine Ornithology, and a U.S. representative for the Circumpolar Seabird Expert Group of CAFF.
Sue Moore, Ph.D.
Dr. Sue Moore is a senior scientist with the U.S. NOAA Fisheries, Office of Science and Technology and an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington, in Biology and the School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences. She has 35 years of research experience focused on the ecology, bioacoustics, and natural history of whales and dolphins, with most of her work directed toward cetaceans in the Pacific Arctic region. Sue received a BA in Biology from the University of California, San Diego, a MS in Biology from San Diego State University, and a PhD in Biological Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, with a dissertation entitled Cetacean Habitats in the Alaskan Arctic. Sue has served the Director of the NOAA National Marine Mammal Laboratory, as Chair of the Environmental Concerns Working Group of the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee and currently serves on various science advisory committees including the U. S. Marine Mammal Commission.
Franz Mueter, Ph.D.
Dr. Franz Mueter is an Associate Professor of Fisheries at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he conducts research, advises graduate students, and teaches courses in quantitative ecology and fisheries oceanography. He has over 20 years experience working as a fisheries oceanographer, statistician, and consultant on fisheries issues in the Bering Sea, Chukchi Sea, and other marine ecosystems around the Arctic. His research has focused on the influence of climate variability and climate change on the recruitment and spatial dynamics of marine and anadromous fish and shellfish populations. Dr. Mueter has participated in numerous oceanographic and fisheries surveys in Alaska’s marine waters, including its arctic seas. He is currently lead investigator on three Arctic projects, the Arctic Ecosystem Integrated Survey (Arctic EIS), a multi-agency, interdisciplinary research project in the northern Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea; a Japan-Norway-US collaboration on the resilience and adaptive capacity of arctic marine ecosystems, and a biophysical modeling project to investigate the early life history of Arctic Gadids. He also advises the North Pacific Fishery Management Council as a member of the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, serves as co-chair of the Ecosystem Studies of the Subarctic Seas (ESSAS) program and is a member of ‘Climate Change Effects on Marine Ecosystems’ (S-CCME), a section of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES).
Research Associates
Dan Cushing, M.Sc.
Dan Cushing joins the AMBON team as a seabird ecologist. With over a decade of field experience, he has worked in the Gulf of Alaska, the Bering Sea, and the Arctic. Dan has participated in studies of seabird distribution, abundance, habitat use, productivity, and diet, using approaches from at-sea surveys to bio-logging technologies. He earned a Master of Science degree in Wildlife Science from Oregon State University, where he studied long-term changes in the marine bird community of Prince William Sound, Alaska, using two decades of survey data collected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.